…players do actually, but more on that in a second. The guys over at Stargate Worlds are starting to wonder if they need them as well. Ironically, they are turning to their community…on their fourms…to ask the question (…ummmmm…) :

Mark Jacobs of EA recently expressed his opinion that official forums were not necessary and therefore won’t be created for Warhammer Online *.

Here at Stargate Worlds we feel Official Forums for the game are an important part of the developer-player relationship, not only during development but through beta, launch and far beyond.

What do you think? Are Official Forums necessary? Do they attract the worst kind of trolls and ultimately scare off the serious posters and would-be community builders? Or are serious fans able to weed through the chaff and find what they need to sustain a healthy relationship with the dev team?

Let me know what you think!

..guess what most of the community is saying.

This whole thing was brought up by Mark Jacobs who seems to be leaning in the direction of no forums. I must say, I don’t disagree with the main thrust of his argument against them:

From my perspective, I’m not as concerned with the cost in terms of dollars (but the players should be) but rather what I will have to put my people through to run those forums. If WAR is as successful as we hope, we will have more users than any other MMORPG other than WoW. If that is true, we will be flooded by good users and bad. When things turn ugly, and they always do, my people will be insulted, yelled at, cursed at, threatened and told the vilest things possible.

..fine, then here is the solution: ban the little bastards. Suspend their account. Cancel their account. If it comes down to it…delete their characters and refund their money. Much like if I went into a store and started cursing and swearing at the cashier, what would happen? At best, I’d be kicked out. Worse case, Police would be called and I’d be taken away or “asked” to leave and if I’m lucky I won’t be tasered. Do the same to those jerks who think that the vale of the internet is a license to be an ass. Hmmm…what’s the online equivalent of a taser??

That being said, I still think official forums are the best way to go. You can’t let a couple of ass-hats ruin the community experience for the good mannered majority. You also have to consider the huge advantage of centralizing your community. Sure, community websites are fantastic…but they’re all over the place and information can sometimes be hard to find. In an official forum, at least people have one place to go to to find the information they need and the community can web out from there.

Me? I’m waiting for the time where a MMO company has a zero tolerance policy towards abusive players…both in the game and in the community. Personally, players like that can take their $14.99 somewhere else. Do that a couple of times. Splash the headline “Belligerent player’s character deleted” all over the internet and I guarantee you’ll see a change in behavior overnight.

I am immediately turned off of games that have no official forums. It reeks not only of laziness but, and this is especially true in Mark Jacob’s comments above, it stinks of fear of the player-base and a misunderstanding of what having official forums means. It shows a lack of trust in the community team to properly deal with the asshats who will be swearing and throwing tantrums on the forums. A lack of trust and faith in the community team from the company makes me, the player, have a lack of faith and trust in the community team.

It should be stated explicitly on the rules of the forums that players ability to post is a privilege, not a right. They have a right to play the game for the monthly fee that they provide so long as they adhere to the rules therein, but the bonus of forums is a gift by the developers, not a right to be abused. If this is stated clearly upfront then you can just start banning away people who have tantrums or disrupt the forums. There is no reason not to. Run your community forums like any decently professional forum. Have a zero tolerance policy for player misconduct.

This, of course, ignores all the other dozens of good things having an official forum for player’s does. I guess some people believe that having official forums means that the community team is relegated to only use them and ignore the fansites. This just shows how little respect they have for what a community really is. But that’s another matter entirely.

From my personal experience it is only the suits who don’t know shit who do not want forums. Again, from my experience, they are afraid of two things:
+ spreading dissent and
+ cost

When I raised the question at work regarding forums the top honcho said “But what if people start criticizing us or worse. Heck, some people might even try to spread racism and…” to witch my reply was the same as Darrens: “That would be awesome, I’d be happy to find out who’s a racist so we can fire their asses!”

Just look what coming down hard with the mod-boot on the SOE forums did. It gave birth to EQ2Flames.com. Then SOE started posting officially at those forums. The rest is history – and so is SOE posting there.

And asking on the forums? WTF? Is the man daft? The ones NOT wanting or caring about forums is hardly going to reply, right?

I’m sorry even though he has some validity to the argument, it still boils down to one thing. They are lazy and don’t want to deal with it. I agree. Just perma ban repeat offenders and it’ll get better. Assuming they don’t start perma banning everyone that disagrees with them.

But if they don’t have a forum they lose all chance to have any input in what is posted about them in the unofficial forums that will happen anyway.

The video game community is spoiled to some extent. I think official forums are great but just try to find an official forum for most retail products. I mean, is there an official forum for Ford automobiles where drivers can get updates from the engineers and designers and give direct feedback about the cars? I don’t think so. There’s an unofficial forum at http://www.fordforum.com/ but Ford doesn’t keep their own forums. George RR Martin, one of my favorite authors, keeps a journal on LiveJournal but that’s far from being a forum. It’s really hard to find any other industry where the customers have such strong involvement with new product developement and testing and where the manufacturers are involved directly with the customers. When (insert favorite movie title here) was in production I wonder how much the writers listened to fan input while writing the scrips? I guess I’m not really being fair though because an MMO is actually a subscription service rather than a retail product. Even then, try finding a support and feedback forum for your favorite service company. How about Time Warner Cable, one of the nation’s largest broadband subscription providers? Surely they have a forum…. hmmmm, maybe not.

My point is that perhaps a forum is actually just overkill. If there is important news, is a web site enough? If a customer really needs help, there’s always the unofficial forums and perhaps toll free customer phone support.

When I first read your original post I was on your side, agreeing that it’s stupid not to have an official forum, but the more I think about it the more I feel that an official forum just isn’t needed.

[…] world about whether or not to have forums sounds very familiar. So does the fan reaction, and so does Darren’s response, which is something like “if they step out of line, ban em’.” I realize I have a […]

Really, what function do you want the offical forums to serv; a resource for tech issues, updates, developer feedback, or a general discussion area

Personally i would go with offical forums and just ditch the general dicussion area. leave that to the fan sites. Keep all the other usual channels of communication between devs / players.

By doing so you limit the usual cess pit of discussion to other sites, monitor them for valid issues and really concentrate on your own forums as a very updated and open area of valid discussion with good moderation.

I think you create more work than you need to by having to wave a ban stick around, seems a little to draconian for my liking ….

Well, if Mr. Jacobs and EA can find suitable, alternative mechanisms to take on the roles that official forums server, more power to him. If he finds a way around paying for what is essentially another game (and we all know there are people who play the forum game more than the real one) as well as a cesspit of complaints and negative feelings (because we go to the forums when something is wrong, not when things are fine), then he can show himself an industry leader.

But if I have to go off the reservation to get real time information on server status, current issues, known problems, patch notes, downtime schedules, and half a hundred other things, then he will have failed.

I don’t like official forums myself. But if I am having and issue with a game, I will visit them. If I see threads indicating that other people are having the same problem, I relax. If I do not see that, or if there is no way for me to see that, then I am going to start opening up CS tickets and the like to figure out what is going on, which will cost a lot more in the end.

You bring up an interesting point, but you also (as you admit) compare it to fields that have little, if any, correlation to game development (specifically MMO development as that is ongoing, but any game development to some extent.) In the case of vehicles not only are multiple options made available when purchasing (for instance, adding a sunroof, or getting a 6 cylinder model instead of a 4 cylinder, etc.) but they have a great deal more valuable metrics to compare it to.

If they notice a drop in sales of a certain model of car from one year to the next it is fairly simple for them to look at what changed, what other competing cars came to market, and thereby create a better car the next year, which will be more competitive.

In the case of the MMO you run into the problem that people are going to come and go, perhaps multiple times. Unfortunately, when a player leaves they don’t necessarily tell you why. Did they leave because of a change you made in a recent patch? Did they leave because they just wanted to try something new? Did they not have the money to spend playing anymore?

The consistency with which change happens means that any metrics you gather are woefully inadequate to put together a reasonable idea of what was done to cause the problems in the first place.

Similarly with TV/Movies in relation to scripts being written. They are forms of passive entertainment, not active entertainment and have a different set of standards. You are not actively involved in the life of the people you see on TV. You did not create the character that you watch each week and therefore have no basis for wanting to affect a change in what happens to him/her.

Even with other services, such as cable or telephone there is no reason for community as there is no (real) ongoing development of the service. It isn’t as if the company is going to “patch” the service bringing about some sweeping change in how things are done (if I can still get online after they do something to the network, what does it really matter to me, the end-user?)

Gaming is an investment of time and money and is something a person actively participates in. I don’t actively participate in getting cable access. I call up my cable company and they hook me up. Then I’m done. If I run into problems, it is a Customer Support issue, not a community issue, and (official game) forums are not about support but about community.

Official forums are not for support, and they are not for news. If that is all that a company is going to do with their forum, then yes, by all means, don’t even bother. At that point they will have already proven that they have no knowledge of how or what community is anyway.

I believe most relevant information about RvR, server status, patch notes, important updates, player stats, guilds, etc. (i.e. important news and info that players need to know) will all be part of the WAR Herald, much as they were with the Camelot Herald site. Forums (aside from a few that Devs may post updates in) are really more about player discussion (or occasionally garnering feedback), not really information dissemination. Only-War and Warhammer Alliance already have vibrant forums and are where most fans of the game go today if they want to read forums, post and discuss stuff.

So not to defend the decision, or say one way is better than the other, but EA Mythic should have it’s “informational” bases covered via the Herald site. Anything beyond that is discussion, which is where his statement becomes more relevant (i.e. trolls, rants, flames, lots of time moderating, etc.).

I have always found Offical forums to be very useful. I like to check them out before I purchase any game, because you can tell if the devs care about making money or making a good game from their interaction with players. This communication is important to the advancement or survival of a game. The people need to feel they have a voice when a problem arises. How are they going to feel that they are being heard on a fan site? Can we count on developers trolling fan sites to see what the community thinks about their game?

I don’t want to play a game where they aren’t interested in player feedback. How will they know if they are getting it right? How important was the vanguard forums to getting that game back in shape? Feedback, positive or negative needs to be made available to the devs. If they aren’t interested in that kind of feedback, its like them saying, “Here is our game! If you don’t like it tough, cause we really don’t care about your opinion.” wr “We have too many players, maybe they should help each other rather than relying on us for guidance”. Without a way to forum to progress communication between Dev and player, how is the game going to advance or in some cases, get fixed?

For them to say we don’t want our people to be abused, I have this to say, “Tough”! Somedays, I don’t like talking to clients either, but how am I ever going to get them the things they need and get it done to their satisfaction if I don’t talk to them?

It’s more than simply wanting a place to communicate with developers. It’s more than wanting to form a community under the brand of “official”. It comes down to a whole lot more than just a any individual or few reasons. It’s the picture as a whole that matters when considering the validity or need for official forums and to be honest, it’s going to be different for each game and for each developer.

Playing the speculation game is fun, but let’s look at what we DO know.

1) World of Warcraft Forums – Been there lately? Measure the volume of utter garbage to that of useful feedback. The ratio is so staggering that it’s almost impossible to discern anything constructive from the noise. In many cases it’s best to avoid such a problem and focus your attention elsewhere. (providing there are other systems in place, which for those without official forums there are)

2) Resources – The resources required to manage forums are astounding. Man power, time, money, etc. But again it’s on a per game/developer basis. If your game is going to be big like WoW then your costs are going to go up. Does that fit the budget?

3) True Purpose – What does the developer want to gain from having their own official forums that they could not gain from visiting a community forum or read in a feedback form? (such as Mythic’s Herald) As Brandon said above, forums are not for support and not for news. If a develop is using them to gather feedback, as inefficient as that may be in some cases, then that justifies having them.

As for Mark Jacobs and Mythic, there are systems in place that have been in place since 2001. The Herald is their system for feedback, news, server status, current issues, known problems, patch notes, downtime schedules, and all other forms of develop – player communication.

This whole “should or shouldn’t we have official forums” question should be an internal affair. The fact that it’s not scares me.

“This whole ?should or shouldn?t we have official forums? question should be an internal affair. The fact that it?s not scares me.”

Exactly. If they don’t have an express need to run a forum then it’s a waste of time and money. That’s what I was trying to say above. Most service industries provide other ways to talk to their customers and a player community doesn’t need to be run by the developers.

By the way Keen, your blog started getting blocked by Websense recently. Did you perhaps add a “Games” tag to your site? I enjoy your blog and miss reading your posts there. Sorry to post that here, but I didn’t know if you knew that Websense had your site on the block list or not.

“Unofficial forums tend to be cleaner and kinder than official forums because people feel more free to abandon them if the tone or community doesn?t suit them. An official forum is perceived as the most likely way to make one?s voice heard by the developers, so people are very reluctant to abandon that forum. So people with vastly different personalities, play-styles, goals, and concerns are all shouting over each other and drawing blood.

If, on the other hand, there is no official forum, then people feel free to select the fansite that best matches their own individual tastes. They?re happier and more focused in their feedback.

Fansites can also act like filters. If each fansite gets to regularly submit questions selected from its community discussions, then the developer can maintain contact with players without needing to constantly monitor each and every forum. That, and the very occasional dev post here and there, would be enough to keep most players satisfied that their voices are being heard.

Vanguard?s community discussions were much more civil and clearer after the community spread out over several fansites.”

I completely agree with Darren that game developers/publishers need to start demonstrating some backbone by standing up to abusive players and forum members. If a shop keeper let someone shout and aggravate other customers endlessly — just so he could continue to collect that person’s money or avoid confrontation — I’d lose respect for that shop keeper. Likewise, a game company that’s unwilling to criticize and occasionally ban people is simply being cowardly. Doing the right thing requires sacrifice, and sometimes that sacrifice is money or publicity.

And playing off Brandon’s comment about forum participation as a privilege… SOE has a good model in that forum access is tied directly to game accounts. That prevents trolls from coming back after you silence them (still allowing them to read the forums) without purchasing the game all over again (and getting silenced again if they repeat their bad behavior).

Last summer I read a news story about Sprint customer service. They noticed that certain customers tended to call a lot more often than any other customer and that a disproportional amount of customer service time was being spent on just a few customers. I’ve seen this myself once when I worked for an electrical co-op. There were elderly people who lived alone that would call just to talk and tried to keep you on the phone for as long as they could. They would call the electric company to complain about an increase in school taxes and such. Sprint decided to drop all of it’s customers who had the most excessive number and length of customer service calls. There was a copy of the letter they sent to those customers included in the news story. It said something like “we feel that we are unable to meet your needs and it would be in everyone’s best interest if you chose a phone provider who is better able to serve you. Thank you for your business, etc….”. Now that’s balls, and comparing a forum to a customer support call center really is a good comparison. I think to some extent you end up with the same kind of problem when you read official forums as you get with call centers. If you are using the forum to gather customer opinions then you’re probably only hearing from a very vocal minority rather than a reliable sample of your customer base. If you really want to know what customers think then there are controlled methods to run polls and get results with error bounds. On the other hand, if you’re just brainstorming for ideas then a forum works great. Eve did that recently for ideas about how they could possibly change asteroid fields. That doesn’t require an official forum though. As long as there is a hard working community representative that posts on all the major fan sites and organizes events the fans will be happy. Oh and if you’re going to ban people for flaming and trolling on the forum, then be prepared to take action when it’s part of the dev team who is flaming or trolling on the forum as well. I saw a computer geek who wasn’t really great at talking to people once, so there’s at least one computer guy who isn’t a people person. There could be others, and a forum isn’t a very controlled or organized way to talk to customers. I’ve seen problems arise many times when a dev will post something that isn’t accurate or complete, or something that is only tentatively planned and gets canceled later. Official forums also have the tendency to wipe out other sites as I saw happen when Petroglyph activated their official forum. Why post on 3 different fan sites when you can post on the official site?

[…] new games coming out, there is always the debate over whether to have official forums or not. Darren recently wrote a piece about official forums, and there’s a lengthy discussion thread over on […]

In my opinion, Official forums are absolutely necessary. It centralizes the community, allows for a diversity of opinions and acts as a “one-stop” hub for developers to gleen feedback. “Fansites” tend to be polarized, with many flocking to the ones that best support their own ideas and interests in the game. That is fine and good, but they should act as a compliment to to the main forums, not as the end-all to that gaming community. I recently had an experience on a Tabula Rasa “fansite” where the moderators took it upon themselves to tamper with players forum signatures and ban anyone that had a disenting opinion to the popular majority that resided there. Of all the years that I have been playing games and participating in their forums, I have never experienced this type of behaviour from an official site. Fansites tend to run fast and loose with their rules and change them to suit the situation present at the time. Official forums are forced to act in a consistent manner. Insofar as harrassers and community trolls I am all for banning them and their accounts. No one should have to take abuse from persons more interested in causing trouble in a community rather than playing the game.

From my own experience in trying to use official game forums, generally you have to wade through a lot of crap to find anything useful. I usually do a search function, sift through the information, hopefully find what I need, and get the hell out. I have yet to be on an offical gaming forum that gives me warm and fuzzies. Normally I see a dysfunctional online community where I did not want to participate in. I have found a handful of non-official gaming forums where the community has been good and they also provide useful information when people asked questions in regards to specific information.

If a company does want to sink resources into an online forum then I wouldn’t hold it against them. However, if that same company also did not invest in an online resource for the game where patches, information, and FAQs were released then I would hold it against them at that time and not purchase the game.

If a company did develop a backbone in forming an online community and implement the policies that Dave discussed it would be interesting to see what would happen.

[…] Darren says ban with extreme prejudice, Michael says don’t ban me bro, and Sanya wants to make sure you’re qualified to be running a forum in the first place, all of which strikes me as the classic “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic” scenario. […]

Its a delicate dance to be sure. But if you balance the jerks who spew hate and vitriol and it’s done fairly not just when someone keeps talking about something your tired of hearing.

To me it makes more sense to give everyone a big target to come too and then actively allow the communication with reasonable moderation. Sure the modereration will upset some people. But it gives the company a chance to have some control over the way the forum affects thier image. If they go the route of no forums someone else will make unmoderated forums and they’ll have to deal with it anyway.

Damn that Raph Koster. He always seems to be right. He always has very compelling arguments. I really can’t find any faults with any of what he said in his post on this subject. He seems to think that having an official forum is a given. I don’t really agree, but I’m far less elloquent about supporting my point of view. Raph seems to think that it’s just common sense to have an official forum and that companies who choose not to run a forum are basically stupid. I’m not so certain I want to rush to judgement on that. WAR is a major title with a huge budget produced by qualified and knowledgeable people. I find it hard to believe that the decision to not run a forum is arbitrary. I can think of at least one good reason a company might decide to go without an official forum. Sometimes (perhaps always?) companies are forced to pick their fights and spend money on the things that are most effective. If given the choice between game content and a forum, I’d have to say game content wins, don’t you think? Otherwise the only thing people are going to talk about on your forum is that you didn’t release enough content. I’m sure there are plenty of other good reasons not to run an official forum. I like official forums, and I like games with official forums. I like to play “the forum game” as much as I enjoy playing “games” sometimes. However, I’ve played and enjoyed many games that didn’t have an official forum. I don’t think it’s a do or die decision as Raph suggested. In stead, I see an official forum as a high cost, high maintenance, risk. If you had a pile of cash and were looking at return on investment while trying to decide where to spend that money, would you say that a forum is a great money-maker?

[…] topic of whether MMORPGs should have official forums or not have popped up again, for example at Common Sense Gamer and The Ancient Gaming Noob and triggered by posts related to Stargate Worlds and Warhammer […]